Black Mountain

August 17 2024

Our first Lake George 12ster! A lot has happened in the last year, including buying our first home together, getting married, adopting another dog, and constant ups and downs with my health, so we haven’t been out exploring much…until now! We pulled into the trailhead at about 12:45pm, signed into the register, and went on our merry way on the trail starting at the back of the parking area.

Check out the map below from all trails to show our route. We went the out-and-back route for a total of about 5 miles…

But we didn’t realize until after that there’s a loop option that’s about 7.7 miles long! In hindsight, we would have taken that route had we known about because loops are so much more fun.

The trail starts off wide and flat on what used to be a road – a nice warmup for any climbing up ahead.

It didn’t take long to reach the first junction with a trail going off to the right, around Sugarloaf mountain.

Then at about half a mile in, we passed a private residence on the left just before reaching this next junction showing directions for a series of ponds to the left, and Black Mountain to the right.

For the first mile or so we passed several of these metal posts with remnants of old wiring hanging off some.

Weather was perfect – not hot, not cold; not humid, just windy enough – and all the way along the trail we spotted SO MANY mushrooms! They must be enjoying all the rain we’ve had this summer.

Eventually the trail did start looking more like a trail and less like a gravel road, but still it was very pleasant at a gentle grade for the first mile and a half.

It seems the trail follows a stream bed for much of the way. It was dry for us, but I could imagine it being a bit tricky in Spring or during periods of heave rain.

At around 2 miles, the grade starts to pick up a bit but still it never because challenging (compared to most Adirondack peak hikes – but we are still climbing a mountain, after all!)

The new pup is fitting right in 🙂

Finally we started to see signs of the summit approaching!

We squeezed our way through a narrow section of trail between some wildberry bushes and emerged onto the summit where we spotted this “In Memory Of” sign which for me is indecipherable beyond that.

We stopped at this nice lookout to catch the hazy views of Lake George before going up to the true summit next to the radio tower. We took our time on the hike up, and made it to the summit about 2.5 hours after starting.

We found a nice rock to have some lunch and…

Victory chocolate!

The tower area is closed to the public but there’s a nice big rock right in front of it that offers excellent views of Lake George and the Tongue Range on the opposite side.

At about 3pm we turned around to head back and saw these trail markers on a tree nearby. I think if we had followed the bottom one back up to the summit, we would have spotted the trail going down the opposite side of the mountain to complete the loop. But instead, we went back the way we came.

The way down was as pleasant as the way up – and this time the trail was happy to see us too = )

As far as Adirondack hikes go, I’d say this is a very family friendly option. At no point was it technically challenging (though again that could change in wetter conditions), and even the climbing portion was never aggressively steep.

The theme of the day was ” What a nice hike!” as we repeated this to ourselves and each other numerous times throughout the day. The walk was so pleasant that it allowed us time to take in little interesting things on the trail, like the mushrooms and these huge weeping holes left by a pileated woodpecker.